The Beezer

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Beezer was a British comic which first started in 1956. Originally A3 size, which was much larger than its stablemates (The Beano and The Dandy were both from the same publisher), the comic ended up going A4 size in 1981. It eventually merged with The Topper in 1990 to form The Beezer and Topper this combination of the two comics finally ended in 1993; however, the Beezer book (annual bumper editions) continued until the 2003 edition. The comic's most popular creations inlcude "The Numskulls", "Colonel Blink", "Baby Crockett", "The Badd Lads", "Ginger", "Pop, Dick and Harry" and "The Banana Bunch".


Tropes used in The Beezer include:
  • Blind Mistake: Colonel Blink
  • Comics Merger: The Beezer absorbed Cracker and Plug, and later merged with The Topper.
  • Expy: "The Banana Bunch" was originally this to "The Bash Street Kids", even by the same artist. However, they later went in a different direction.
  • Mobile Suit Human: The Numskulls were about a bunch of little people called Numskulls, who lived inside a man whom they called Our Man and sort of controlled him. This even spawned a subgenre of sorts with numerous expies, including "The Nervs" in Wham, Smash or Pow (can't remember which) and "Ill Will and the Germs" in The Beano.
  • Recursive Reality: In one annual, the Numskulls wonder if they are also 'worked' by even smaller Numskulls inside their own heads, but the Editor hastily ends the annual before they can find out.
  • Stupid Evil: The Badd Lads were a bunch of comically useless criminals.
  • Younger and Hipper: When the Numskulls moved to The Beano, Our Man was replaced with a boy called Edd. Also, when Colonel Blink was moved to The Dandy, he became a young boy called Blinky. (Later, Colonel Blink made occasionaly cameos in Blinky's strip, usually in annuals, and was said to be his uncle, making Blinky a Legacy Character).
    • Actually, both changes happened with the Beezer and Topper merger in 1990. Colonel Blink no longer appeared in Blinky when it moved to The Dandy, and the character got a whole new look.